316 : Black-bellied Whistling Duck

Black-bellied Whistling Duck - Dendrocygna autumnalis

The Daily Bird has been resting in a corner of my to-do list pretty much for a whole year. I think I am just a bit tired of the birds I am likely to see in the UAE and haven't been back to the UK as much of recent - and not with time to just kick back with a camera. So I am somewhere different and the call of the wild (whistles in this case) has pulled me on for a few more birds.

I find myself in Florida - the Hilton in Orlando with 4 days to use wisely. I have a conference starting on Wednesday for work. Its a long story but flights I booked to time with a longer trip involving two conferences back to back lent themselves to not being changed due their cheapness. I will be fully on the correct time for the partner conference by Wednesday which is a good thing. In the meantime room 1985 ("a jolly good year" got a laugh from one member of staff possibly not born then) looks something like the back room of a mad inventor/naturalist. Lenses, wires, laptops, bins, scopes, tripods - just a shame I forgot a bird book. Luckily Handbook of the Birds of the World online is a super resource and coupled with a pencil, paper and a camera I can back fill identification.

So lets forget about Mickey and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and understand where Florida is. Florida is sitting between 24 and 31 degrees latitude. The Tropic of Cancer is at latitude 23.43 degrees so by mid June the sun is almost directly overhead in the Florida Keys (or there abouts) or 4 degrees off the vertical in Orlando half-way up the Florida pan-handle. The tropics are situated at the axial tilt of the earth such that twice a year the sun is directly overhead either tropic after making half of its seasonal  journey. Anyway this explains why it was 96 degrees celsius on the car thermometer as I navigated myself to the Orlando Wetland's Park and why it looked liked something out of Forest Gump's trip to Nam.

I was joking to myself that this looked pretty "Good morning Vietnam" but then when I was doing my geographical trick of putting myself in context with the sun I worked out that I am pretty much on the same latitude as the "Delta to the DMZ". Dubai, Northern India and Bangladesh and Vietnam and Florida - Ah I recognise this humidity !

So its warm and that means that lots of the birds are actually shared more with the tropics and South America including these fine ducks who put on decent breeding season squabbling show for me after I had found the place using my heath robinson alternative to sat-nav (a pair of eyes, sign posts and a sense of direction and a google map). Hertz managed to supply a car without sat-nav the so-called "Never Lost" system at US 36.99 or whatever it was. Well the system itself got lost and was not installed and a Ford Focus became an SUV due to the holiday weekend demands. I am not sure whey they had a booking system as I found the Hertz lady about to give away my car to shouting family. Anyway I managed to jury rig up a system with a google map on the laptop on the front seat with directions and my blackberry. Only got lost about 3 times. Driving is expensive here - every 5 or 10 miles you have to give someone a dollar to use the next road section. I think you get somewhere in 40 minutes if they had one toll day for 10 dollars rather than 10 for 1 dollar.

40-50 minutes was a bit optimistic. The place itself is located in the small town of Christmas - I had to pass the year round Christmas tree complete with nativity scene. Its actually a giant eco-friendly water treatment facility using a large number of parcels of land and berms to filter water naturally for reusage. Home to Otters, deer and these fellows (who were not really in evidence apart from one specimen half submerged which I took to be a log a long way off).

So as well as tropical birds there are alligators and I am hoping to see West Indian Manatees at some point if I can make the drive out to Merrick Island.

Back to the ducks. I hiked round a loop trail for about 3 miles judging it perfectly for the hottest time of the day !?! I also managed not to take any water and select my heaviest equipment. The good old Bubba Gump Shrimp Company hat soaked up a litre of head juice and kept the sweat out of my eyes. The place is stunning. You could be forgiven for thinking that it is a wilderness rather than a working water treatment plant. I shall have to learn something about the flora before I go but stands of palms and pine - tracks of reeds and open water interspersed with dead forest and grassland. A patchwork quilt teaming with birds. I stumbled on a large group of what I knew were Whistling Ducks but not what kind. They were good enough to put on a squabble for me. Ever changing  gangs and pairs of thugs taking on the next set of pretenders. Perhaps establishing this year's pecking order. While the squabble continued I could get my eye back in with a new camera body. I managed to under expose everything though due to a slip of a button. Note to self - check camera settings before the action starts.

I'm coming mate !

Goose stepping ? More like the Duck-Step.

Be gone young pretender !

Three make a concerted challenge.

Don't mess with us ! This of course though was all accompanied by a racket of cute whistles as they are Black-bellied Whistling Ducks after all.

So its Sunday and whilst I will have to be watching the blackberry I think I should be able to take in perhaps 4 new places each day and maybe even return this Wetland but with a functioning camera and some water. I hardly touched the place really and its always whats just around the bend. There is a list of 50 florida endemics I am fairly keen to see - including a special squirrel !

Black-bellied Whistling Duck, Dendrocygna autumnalis
Orlando Wetlands Park, Florida, USA
23 May 2015